


The Queen of Rokovoko

by the_alchemist



Category: Moby Dick - Herman Melville
Genre: Crack, Fix-It, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Multi, Orgy, Questionable facts about whales
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-20
Updated: 2013-12-20
Packaged: 2018-01-05 06:41:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1090815
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_alchemist/pseuds/the_alchemist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A divinely decreed orgy, a ship full of eager men, 200 barrels of sperm oil ... and a captain they decided not to invite. What could possibly go wrong?</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Queen of Rokovoko

**Author's Note:**

  * For [notkingyet](https://archiveofourown.org/users/notkingyet/gifts).



> Thanks to beta reader R, Herman Melville, and the creator of the website from which I sourced my 'facts' about whales. I have every confidence it is just as reliable as Melville's own sources were.

Dagoo was a surprisingly gentle lover, but there was nothing effeminate about his gentleness. To this day, I remember his big hands caressing my chest, my stomach, my buttocks and thighs with a protective masculine grace that deprived me of breath.

Fucking with Flask was very much like fighting. We rolled over and over along the deck, and when we were done, I felt the tingle of emerging bruises.

Below deck, it was so dark that I did not always know which names and faces belonged to the bodies pressed against mine. But after perhaps an hour, I found myself in the familiar arms of Queequeg. “Thank you,” I murmured, in a state of utmost bliss.

* * *

We had been many months at sea when Queequeg told me Yojo had decreed a time of festival, and gave me to understand that this festival was to be a bacchanalia chiefly consisting of the free exchange of amatory rites. I stared at him in delighted surprise for, though my mind and soul were his, I had often longed to broach the subject of sharing bodily pleasures more widely, but refrained from doing so lest he thought himself no longer loved.

I was yet more surprised to see the eagerness with which our shipmates – Christian and cannibal alike – embraced the notion. Those who declined did so politely, with no offense taken. “Live and let live,” said Mr Starbuck, “that’s what I say.”

It was agreed that our Captain was of too solitary and tragical a spirit to take an interest in such matters, and that it would be better not to inform him of our plans. We were not afraid of discovery since he had at that time taken to brooding belowdecks all day and night, and Starbuck had offered to keep watch on his door.

No-one even mentioned Fedallah and his crew.

* * *

Forced by the limitations of our bodies to take a rest from active participation, Queequeg and I sat together watching a group of shipmates explore the erotic possibilities of a barrel of oil. Looking up towards the stars, I saw the Manxman grinning down at them, and wondered whether he had volunteered to take the watch not – as I had thought – because of either age or chastity, but because of a tendency towards voyeurism.

I stroked Queequeg’s naked thigh. His skin there was the texture of silk and the colour of burnished bronze. The tattoo there was like a labyrinth, and I traced it with my finger, finding it led upwards and upwards. I began to feel myself becoming aroused again, when he pulled me up onto his lap and–

Suddenly there was a loud noise as the cabin door crashed open.

Out emerged the head and shoulders, then the arms and body of our uninvited Captain. As when a schoolteacher happens upon a group of schoolboys bent on mischief, he looked round slowly at every one of us, then boomed in consternation: “What in the devil’s name do you think you’re doing?”

There was a momentary silence, then Starbuck stepped forward (he had been knocked aside by the suddenly opening door) and stood between us and the newcomer. “Sir–” he began, but Ahab swiped him away and climbed fully out onto the deck, surveying the scene before him.

“Debauchery,” he labelled it, but without any tone of judgment. “And you’re all here, are you?” He looked from one shipmate to another, his eyes settling in a corner. “Even Pip?”

Pip was snuggling in Dough-boy’s arms, both of them still fully clothed. He seemed oblivious to his singling out, and looked calm again, as he had done sometimes before his abandonment.

“Sir,” started Starbuck again. “You have to understand–“

But Ahab ignored him. “But no-one has a place in their arms for Ahab,” he said. “He is forever the outcast, even on his own ship.”

“Oh sir,” said Starbuck. “That’s not it at all. It’s only that they thought you wouldn’t want to–”

“Aye,” said Ahab. “For thou thinkst that Ahab hath no human feeling in him! No affections, no urges, nothing in his trousers but one and a half legs, and a thirst for vengeance that courses through every vein in his body?”

“Not at all–” began Starbuck, but at that point, Ahab dropped his trousers, revealing his hairy thighs, the leather harness attaching his ivory leg to the remains of his fleshly one, and a surprisingly large penis.

* * *

It strikes me that this might be an opportune moment to inform the reader of certain matters pertaining to cetacean anatomy.

The genital organs of a fully grown male sperm whale weigh approximately one ton, which is about the same as two horses of middling size. During the breeding season members of the species gather into large groups, and mate promiscuously, each male with many females and vice versa. I have read also that it is not unknown for two males to couple with one another, but I do not know whether that is true.

At his moment of ecstasy, the bull releases around forty gallons of seed. I have seen it theorised that the reason he is so lavish of his bounty is thereby to flush out the leavings of rivals who have come before him. Yet despite its volume and many other remarkable qualities, it must be emphasized that this is not the liquid after which our quarry was named. That eponymous privilege belongs to a substance located in his head, the function of which has baffled even the greatest experts.

* * *

“Well, come on then,” said Ahab, stepping forward, and almost tripping over his trousers, now bunched round his two ankles, ivory and skin. “Someone show me what to do. Do we take it in turns or what? How do we decide who does what to whom?”

People shifted awkwardly. Some turned away. I saw Stubb (Stubb!) blushing.

“You,” said Ahab, pointing to Tashtego, who happened to be sitting on a nearby blanket with two or three companions. “Show me. I am your Captain and will not be left out.”

He lurched forward, but Starbuck reached out and caught hold of him. “ _I’ll_ show you, Sir,” he said gently. “Come here, come here.” He folded Ahab in his arms, drawing him close. “Come to the bulwarks, sir. I’ve left my blanket there, so we can get comfortable.”

Ahab allowed himself to be led away, his face more than usually unfathomable.

* * *

At first I thought the interruption had proved fatal to the celebration of Yojo’s festival. Shipmates looked back and forth at one another, not speaking of moving; but then, as though drawn by some invisible mechanism, they began clustering together again in groups of two or three or more, reaching out and touching, smiling, laughing.

I saw then that Fedallah and his crew were also among us: yellow skins mingling with the brown, tan and pink, and the Parsee himself kneeling not before the elements of fire and water, but before a bow-legged sailor, servicing him with enthusiasm and tenderness.

Seeing Stubb looking in our direction, I turned to Queequeg who nodded, and we both held our hands out in invitation. Stubb’s face broke into a big grin as the two of us deprived him of the trousers he was somehow still wearing.

* * *

(In the bulwarks, Starbuck’s hands taught Ahab’s stricken body to remember that there is such a thing as pleasure, coaxing his old muscles to soften and relax, shocking into life those long-atrophied pathways within his overburdened nervous system which were made to pulse with delight and – yes – even ecstasy.)

* * *

Midnight. The Forecastle. Enter FEDALLAH; to him ISHMAEL.

FEDALLAH

Ah, ah, how I am beset with fear and confusion, for while I plainly see that the white whale is the greatest and worst of all Ahriman’s creatures and that it is my duty to destroy him; how can I, when it is prophesied that in doing I shall be drawn to my death, and so pollute the holy element of water with decay? Oh, Ahura Mazda – show me the way! But soft: who comes here?

ISHMAEL

Pardon, sir. I thought I was alone.

FEDALLAH

No, no, my friend, it is I who am alone: ever alone, though in the midst of humanity.

ISHMAEL

Oh friend, friend (for now I see that all here are my bosom friends), how I have wronged thee, for I thought thou was a shade, a thing of night, and now I see thou art a man as I am, and lonely. What I took for a fearsome darkness in thee was merely a modest bashfulness. Come, come, my dear Fedallah, for none should be lonely on a night like this, let me embrace thee ...

* * *

Ahab awoke with Starbuck still coiled up asleep in his arms. A strange thought occurred to him: what if he stopped hunting the white whale? What if he just filled the ship with oil and went home? Of course it was a ridiculous fantasy, but all the same, it would be very _nice_.

Pip awoke with his head resting on Dough-boy’s shoulder. He blinked. “They found Pip,” he said, to no-one in particular. “They found _me_.” The two young men looked at one another, then Dough-boy grinned and kissed his companion on the cheek.

Fedallah didn’t awake because he hadn’t slept, but had sat in front of a candle all night trying to work out the truth of things.

As usual, I awoke in Queequeg’s hammock: joyful, satisfied and very much in love.

Starbuck awoke. At first he was confused about why he was on the deck, but then he looked up at Ahab’s puzzled face and remembered. “Nevertheless,” Ahab was muttering, “when all’s said and done, does it really matter whether one whale or another is alive or dead today or tomorrow? All living things die, sooner or later.” 

Flask and Stubb awoke; so did Dagoo and Tashtego and all the others, in twos and threes and blissful piles of four or more. The sunrise bathed the whole ship in peachy light. Alone in the forecastle, Fedallah bowed down and worshipped, thanking Ahura Mazda for releasing him from his burden.

* * *

_So the LORD blessed the latter end of Job more than his beginning: for he had fourteen thousand sheep, and six thousand camels, and a thousand yoke of oxen, and a thousand she asses._

About six months after our return to dry land, having taken a position in a Nantucket school and rented a little cottage in which I settled with my ‘manservant’ Queequeg, we received an invitation to dinner, carefully written on thick, cream-coloured paper. It began “Mr and Mrs Ahab, and Mr and Mrs Starbuck request the pleasure of your company ...”

For it had happened that not only our erstwhile Captain and First Mate, but also their wives, agreed with one another so well that they had set up home together.

Captain Ahab was a changed man. In his retirement, he had taken up gardening, and proudly showed us around his flowerbeds and vegetable patch. It was only when he spoke of slugs and snails that I saw any trace of his former self: his fists clenched and his face reddened, and he was heard to utter that if Satan had taken any form upon earth it was not, as was hitherto thought, as a serpent, but as a pumpkin-devouring mollusc. His wife Eliza, a delightful woman, not yet thirty and heavily pregnant, smiled at him and took his hand and said that the pumpkins tasted quite as good whether or not they had previously been nibbled by other of God’s creatures.

This was indeed true, for our dinner began with an excellent pumpkin soup, expertly prepared and served by their cook, who to my great surprise I recognised as young Pip. He seemed a foot taller now he was no longer cowed by fear and misery, and I’ll wager his cooking would not have been out of place in the finest restaurants in Boston or Paris.

As we commenced with the beef (which Queequeg still cut with his harpoon), Mr Starbuck told us his news, that Mr Bildad and Mr Peleg had appointed him Captain of the Pequod, and the following month he was to sail again.

“And whither does it go?” I asked

“To the south seas,” said Mr Starbuck. Queequeg and I exchanged a glance, but the time was not yet ripe to speak of our own news.

When the ladies withdrew, I was able, by way of certain insinuations, to bring the conversation around to the two not-unconnected topics of Yojo’s Festival and of their unorthodox living arrangements.

It transpired that Eliza Ahab and Mary Starbuck, moving in not dissimilar social circles, and each having a son of about the same age, had made each others’ acquaintance while their husbands were at sea, forming a close and affectionate friendship; and, furthermore, once the four were reunited, love had been found to blossom in every possible direction.

Emboldened by a little too much wine, I asked what they meant by love: surely they could not be referring to its physical manifestations? Mr Starbuck blushed and smiled, and said that on the first Monday of every month, his wife sat at the kitchen table and drew up a chart showing who was to sleep with whom on each night, which she pinned to the door of the master bedroom.

So it was that when we rejoined the ladies, we knew we could speak frankly about our plans for the future.

It had happened thus, I explained.

In one of his daily consultations with Yojo, Queequeg had learnt that his father had died, or was shortly to die, or some such matter; and so since it was the case that by the laws of his island, he, Queequeg, was to succeed him as king, it was his duty to return there within the year.

On hearing this news, my heart had burst with sorrow, not only for my friend’s bereavement but for my own. For while a Nantucket schoolmaster can live with his servant without arousing the least suspicion among his neighbours, I was certain that, there were no circumstances in which a king, being under far greater scrutiny, could take another man to his bed.

But did I not _want_ to be his queen? Queequeg asked, and, met with my incomprehension, further asked whether perchance ‘prince consort’ were the better English phrase for the word he was translating from his native tongue? But still I did not understand, and so he tried again. If King George of England, he enquired, had chosen to marry a youth rather than a virgin, by what title would that youth be known?

And so it was that I came to learn that in Rokovoko, it is not considered strange or sinful when two men wish to marry, and that if I were to accompany him there, I would be accorded all the honour that his own mother and grandmother had received on marrying his father and grandfather.

When I told our hosts of all this, Mrs Ahab clapped her hands and said how splendid it was to have dined with a king and queen, and Mr Starbuck entreated us to take passage aboard the Pequod, which offer we of course accepted at once.


End file.
